Mars' local path: last 30 days

Event Date: December 12th

Time: 5:30 PM

Brief

Mars has had a very interesting showing in the sky over the last few weeks.  However, I am not talking about its appearance magnitude or feature-wise.  Being close to superior conjunction and far from us, it is a very small disc, and features are hard to see without a powerful telescope.  Of course, the planet has been low in atmospheric pollution, making it almost ignorable to most.  One thing that we should not ignore though, is its daily altitude at Sunset.  As Mars' separation with the Sun has decreased in value, the geometry of the western evening sky has improved.  Therefore, Mars has become less and less south of the Sun over the last few months, and now a little more north of it.  Seen from this hemisphere, as well as the image below, this has helped Mars' apparition at Sunset.  The local path is shown here, for over the last 30 days.

click on image to enlarge: courtesy of Starry Night Pro Plus, version 6.4.3, by Simulation Curriculum Corp.

Detailed

  I have shown this path in past weeks, over longer durations of over two months.  Then, the "hook" would be more obvious, after a steep "downslope".  Now, as we can see, the slope has become close to nothing, and the planet is starting to be nearly the same altitude each evening.  Of course, we just had our earliest Sunset about a week ago, so when I show this path again in about one more month, the slope will start again in the opposite direction--heading up.  By then, Mars will still be more north of the Sun, yet getting closer to conjunction, so slightly closer to it in separation.  We will have the planet east of the Sun for more weeks of winter, although it will disappear out of view by the season's final weeks.  During spring, it will be lost in the glare of Sun.  We will not easily see Mars again with the eye until the middle of next year, and not more brightly until late in the year, as it approaches its next opposition during spring of 2014.